Norman Adler
Norman Tenner Adler (June 7, 1941 – September 11, 2016) through his research, teaching, writing, and academic administration, made major contributions to the modern study of
biological psychology and in American
higher education, having helped develop the fields that are now labeled
behavioral neurobiology and
evolutionary psychology. One of Adler's prominent experiments included an in depth analysis of mating performance of male rats and its relation to fertilization in the female, which led him to observe how behaviour could affect reproduction in species. With his students and colleagues, he has worked at the interface between
biology and behavior. They have stressed the importance of combining the study of physiological mechanisms controlling behavior with the functional/adaptive significance of behavior in an evolutionary context. He was influenced in this approach by his undergraduate teachers at Harvard, especially Paul Rozin, Jerry Hogan, and Gordon Bermant, and his student colleagues like Don Pfaff with whom he has maintained scientific relationships over the years. His research was also impacted by Daniel Lehrman, and he worked closely with Lehrman's student,
Barry Komisaruk, on
hormones and
neural functioning. Adler is also a prominent figure in American higher education, especially the role of behavioral neuroscience in liberal arts education and religion in the college classroom. He participated in Phillip Zimbardo's PBS TV series
Discovering Psychology, one of the first distance-learning courses in
psychology.
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